To:M. P. TOMSKY

Written:Written in September, prior to 20th, 1909Published:First published in 1964, inCollected Works, Fifth (Russian) Ed., Vol. 47.

      Sent from Paris to Moscow.

      Printed from a handwritten copy found in police records.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1977],

      Moscow,Volume 43,

      pages221b-222.Translated:Martin Parker and Bernard IsaacsTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

DearComrade,

Justgot back to our capital here and read your letter on how things
are coming along. As regards the school, you are mistaken if you think “we
are in a bad way”. Nothing of the kind. That workers, once they are given
the money, should agree to go down to the glorious South is natural—there
is nothing to complain about in this. Only it is necessary to have
resolutions adopted that on the waybackthese workers are to come
				 here[1]for a month—this is the crux of the matter. Unless they drop in here all
talk about “supervision”, “direction”, etc., is sheer
			     “blague”[2]or hypocrisy. To come here means to learn something more than Alexinsky’s
whining and Lunacharsky’s “socialism”. And believe me, thisway[3]—by

bamboozling 20–50 workers withtheirlearning—they will not get
very far. Oh no, it’s good enough for making a noise, for bragging aboutKautsky’s
letter,[4]for putting on a show abroad, but there is nothing serious
about this underhand indoctrination. Make no mistake, this is not a
“school”, but a new Yerogin
hostel[5]abroad for surreptitiously filling the heads of dozens of
workers with otzovist nonsense. Maximov and Co. will merely make a noise
for a while and end up with a fiasco.

TheTrotsky business, regrettably, will not work out. We offered him
ideal conditions,sincerelywishing to enter into a bloc with him:
a salary, payment of thePravdadeficit, equal rights on the
Editorial Board, transfer here; he does not agree, but wants amajorityon the Editorial Board (two Trotskyites and one
Bolshevik!). Clearly we cannot maintain in another city a Trotskyite, not a
Party, paper. What Trotsky wants is not to build the Party together with
the Bolsheviks, but to createhis ownfaction. Very well, let him
try! By means of “his” faction he will win over some people from the
Mensheviks, a few from us, and in the long run will inevitably lead the
workers to Bolshevism.

Asfor the “slight revision of the agrarian question”, as you
ironically put it, in the given case, if it is a matter of the role of the
peasantry in the revolution, it is necessary to be more cautious. Thebeginningshould be made with a discussion in the general Party or
general Bolshevik press. I especially wish to warn against hasty rejection
of Bolshevism and exaggerated faith in the success of the Stolypin agrarian
policy. It unquestionably posed new problems which must bestudied and
studied again; itopenedthe possibility of a
non-revolutionary way out, but this is still as remote from complete
success as the stars in the heavens.

[1]Thatis, to Paris, where the Bolshevik Centre was
located.—Ed.

[2]Humbug.—Ed.

[3]Areference to the factional, splitting activities of the organisers of
the Capri school—Ed.

[4]KarlKautsky’s reply of August 20, 1909, to an invitation to lecture at
the Capri school was printed as a separate leaflet and later in the
Supplement to issue No. 5 of the ViennaPravdaof September 20
(October 3), 1909. Kautsky declined to lecture but welcomed the
organisation of the school. Observing that “it would he gratifying if the
R.S.D. could at last overcome factional division which weakens it so
much”, Kautsky urged that philosophical differences should not be brought
to the fore in either propaganda or the organisational sphere.

[5]Yeroginhostel—a hostel for peasant deputies to the First
Duma in St. Petersburg sponsored by Duma deputy Yerogin, a wealthy
landowner, where the peasant deputies were indoctrinated in the spirit of
loyalty to the autocracy (see present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 45–46).